Saturday, February 28, 2015

"This is a barefoot poetry, almost in the very oldest Asian sense of that phrase, a poetry of voice & body that recognizes that even body-language has accents, which surely it does. The eye is keen, the humor self-deprecating. Mark Weiss has reached that point on life’s mesa where forgiveness (to oneself as well as others) may well be the most important of gestures. A book to make you glad to be in the world." —Ron Silliman

On this episode of TNL [Thursday Night Live on ABC Jazz], we celebrate the life and music of the great Clark Terry, who passed away at the age of 94 on February 21, 2015.

Broadcast

Thursday, March 5, 2015. 9:00pm - 10:00pm

"Imitate, assimilate, innovate..." These three words were Clark Terry's way of summing up how to be yourself as an artist. Copy your idols, integrate their ideas and then make them your own by building upon them. CT was renowned not only for his work as a trumpeter, composer and sideman (for the likes of Duke Ellington, Count Baise and Oscar Peterson), but also as an educator and mentor to many younger jazz musicians.

Even in his 90s, he was eager to encourage young jazz musicians in their own musical journeys. The Australian drummer and film director Al Hicks captured Terry's passion for the music in his documentary titled 'Keep On Keepin' On.' The film highlights CT's relationship with Justin Kauflin - a young, blind pianist breaking into the scene in America. It's definitely worth the watch, and you can check out the trailer here.

So as the tributes flow for the late jazzman, we're airing a live concert, recorded 25 years ago at the Village Gate in 1990. Joining him in his quintet is Don Friedman on piano, Marcus McLauren on bass, Kenny Washington on drums and Jimmy Heath on saxophones. Paquito D'Rivera is also on the bill, sitting in as a guest on Terry's tune 'Silly Samba.'

The vast continent of Australia was settled in two main streams, far apart in time and origin.

The first came ashore some 50,000 years ago when the islands of Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea were one. The second began to arrive from Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. Each had to come to terms with the land they found, and each had to make sense of the other.

The long Aboriginal occupation of Australia witnessed spectacular changes. The rising of the seas isolated the continent and preserved a nomadic way of life, while agriculture was revolutionising other parts of the world. Over millennia, the Aboriginal people mastered the land's climates, seasons and resources.

Traditional Aboriginal life came under threat the moment Europeans crossed the world to plant a new society in an unknown land. That land in turn rewarded, tricked, tantalised and often defeated the new arrivals. The meeting of the two cultures is one of the most difficult and complex meetings in recorded history.

In this book Professor Geoffrey Blainey returns first to the subject of his celebrated works on Australian history, Triumph of the Nomads (1975) and A Land Half Won(1980), retelling the story of our history up until 1850 in light of the latest research. He has changed his view about vital aspects of the Indigenous and early British history of this land, and looked at other aspects for the first time.

Compelling, groundbreaking and brilliantly readable, The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia is the first instalment of an ambitious two-part work, and the culmination of the lifework of Australia's most prolific and wide-ranging historian.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

A reminder that the first reading this year will be on Tuesday March 10. It will feature Geoffrey Lehmann (Sydney) and Jeri Kroll (Adelaide). See details below.

Please come along and make it a great start to the year. Please note new start times i.e. dinner at 6 and readings at 7.30. If you'd like to join my tables up the front let me know or you may prefer to start your own table and book directly with The Gods on 6248 5538 or thegodscafe@gmail.com.

All the best

Geoff Page

Geoffrey Lehmann's poetry was first published in The London Magazine when he was 18. His Poems 1957—2013 was published by UWAP last year. He has also co-edited with Robert Gray three anthologies of Australian Poetry, including the massive Australian Poetry Since 1788.

Jeri Kroll’s Workshopping the Heart: New and Selected Poems came out from Wakefield Press last year.. Her verse novel, Vanishing Point (Puncher & Wattmann), was staged at the George Washington University in 2014. She is also a Professor of English and Creative Writing.

Kit Kelen’s new collection, Scavenger’s Season (Puncher & Wattman, 131pp, $25), has its own bush ethereality, but it’s mainly tonal. The book describes his relationship, over 25 years or so, with his 2ha property on the NSW north coast and the surrounding landscape. There is a lightness to it all that reproduces the feeling of sun through trees, either experienced or seen in art.Kelen moves through the countryside like a relaxed urban flaneur embarked on a drive rather than someone determined to drink in meaning and significance from it all.He pays attention, and the sketching is sharp, but always under the watchful eye of an intellect that makes constructs of experience.The tone is set early on with the long poem Shed, (which won the Newcastle Poetry Prize local award in 2013).The shed is the ultimate rural assemblage — made up of all sorts of scraps, it is a place to work and ponder, and the bush is all around, and in and out of it all the time. There is almost no concept that can’t be worked into a shed metaphor, and Kelen gets to most of them:Why bother with the grid? / A blowfly drone’s annoying / but one day it will power the place. The thing just needs / some nutting out. So leave it on the bench. / The peasant / is the king here. Where monarchs tinker with old crowns / no need for revolution.Later in the book, with in my tin kingdom the shed seems to have diffused out into the landscape: “and a stretch / spring is such / with gums of their own volition / my kingdom / ‘tis of tin I sing”. In between these galvanised ruminations, Kelen’s experience of the land, the wildlife, of himself, is conveyed in short, rhythmic, rhetorical phrases, bucolic and ode-like, and Horace makes an appearance, in case we were in any doubt as to what is going on.Kelen’s engagement with the country is a wry one: he is amused by the fact that within his boundaries nothing much happens of any utility, and he engages with the land in an almost Berkeleyan fashion: it seems to exist only if he writes about it. He is self-consciously a bricoleur, making his life and art out of what he finds lying around, and makes the Australian bush appear far more charming than it has any right to.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

After a decade of ragged, terror-driven politics many people's dreams of and for Australia are looking battered, but the dreaming continues. Essays and other contributions here reflect the wide range and complexity of a nation's dreaming. Calls for a fairer economy, a more direct democracy, animal rights, a more subtle and respectful understanding of the rights and rites of place; reflections upon the dreams of migrant communities; examinations of the dream factories of our poetry and cinema. Lost dreams, shattered dreams, strangled dreams, stranded dreams, even a few that might be coming true. Some of the best new work from some of the finest writers of the region, new and established, and our customary contingent of reviews of poetry and fiction.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004 to 2006, writes: "Kurt Brown was a talented poet who died in 2013, and his posthumous selected and new poems opens with this touching late poem to his wife, Laure-Anne.

he so vividly evoked the drudgery and hardships of working-class life in America, and in part because this didn’t pull his poetry down into brackishness.

He was a shrewd and very funny man. I’m not sure another major American poet could give advice quite like the following, from a poem called “Facts,” collected in Mr. Levine’s classic 1991 book “What Work Is”:

Mr. Levine was among those poets, and there are not enough of these, whose words you followed even outside their poetry. His interviews, for example, were feasts for the mind. To get back to Della and Tatum, Sweet Pea and Packy, and Ida and Cal for a moment, here is what he told The Paris Review in

1988 about the unpeopling of American poetry:

“Except for the speaker, no one is there. There’s a lot of snow, a moose walks across the field, the trees darken, the sun begins to set, and a window opens. Maybe from a great distance you can see an old woman in a dark shawl carrying an unrecognizable bundle into the gathering gloom.”

When people do appear in poems, Mr. Levine added: “Their greatest terror is that they’ll become like their parents and maybe do something dreadful, like furnish the house in knotty pine.” This man was a thoroughbred moral comedian.

The Noel Rowe Poetry Award

An award in memory of Australian poet and academic Noel Rowe in celebration of his commitment to and support of Australian poetry. This biennial award is for the publication of a first manuscript by an emerging poet of any age. In the spirit of Noel Rowe's support and mentoring of emerging writers, the winning entrant will be given the opportunity to work on their manuscript with one of the judges.

Noel Rowe (1951-2007) was an inspirational teacher of Australian Literature in the Department of English at the University of Sydney from 1986 to 2007. He was one of the first to teach creative writing courses in poetry at the University of Sydney, through which he encouraged and mentored new poets with humour, wisdom and insight.

Award guidelines

This award is for an unpublished manuscript of between 60-90 A4 pages.

The manuscript must not be under consideration for other manuscript awards. The manuscript must not be under consideration with any publisher.

Entrants must have previously published at least three poems in print or online literary journals or newspapers.

This award is for a first collection of poetry. As such, entrants should not have previously published a collection of poetry more than 40 pages in length.

Entrants should be either Australian citizens or have been residing in Australia for at least three years.

Entrants can be of any age.

The judges' decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

Judges reserve the right not to make the award if no manuscript received is of a high enough standard.

Before publication, the winning entrant must be willing to work on their manuscript with the judges.

Except for the winning and shortlisted manuscripts, we are unable to give advice on manuscripts submitted nor enter into correspondence.

Submission guidelines

Manuscripts must be submitted as a PDF or a Word document to: nrpa@vagabondpress.net

Entrants should use their full name and manuscript title for the file name. (example: 'YourName_ManuscriptTitle.pdf')

Manuscripts must include a title page, contents page and pages must be numbered.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

The long wait is over! Judge Nathan Hondros of Regime Books has made his final selections and produced a tantalising Short List. Congratulations to everyone given here. Please find the short listed poems below with authors in alphabetical order.

'Losing Kilter' by Susan Adams NSW

'the race around musings creep over' by Geraldine Burrowes VIC

'Triduum' by Anne Elvey VIC

'Sharks' by Paul Gardner WA

''dust' by Rose Hunt QLD

'Sazanami' by Ross Jackson WA

'Islands' by Caitlin Maling WA

'The Copper Beech' by Claire Potter WA

'Beneath Parliament Hill' by Claire Potter WA

'Design' by Catherine Wright WA

Join FAWWA and Voice Box at The Fly Trap in Fremantle for the Prize Giving on February 23rd at 7pm.

Creating poetry from the news. Sean will show you examples of his own poetry where he has used true life events to create an alternative narrative to the real world. He will then provide newspapers and magazine articles as prompts to take your own poetry on a different direction.

Wednesday, February 04, 2015

Fiona Katauskas' work has also appeared in ABC's The Drum, New Matilda, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, The Financial Review and Scribe's Best Australian political cartoon anthologies.

Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Of that five one will be drawn from our annual chapbook competition; one will be an anthology of individual poems; one will be a compilation of abstract propositions. Anyone is able to submit to these projects and people who believe themselves to be under-represented in the poetry mainstream are especially encouraged to submit.

Although we are based in Australia, we do not limit ourselves to publishing poetry from here or even across the Tasman. If you are a poet living and working anywhere in the world and think you would like to write a beautifully crafted chapbook aimed at a discerning and appreciative audience please contact us. We are always looking to discuss new possibilities.

We also publish a blog focusing on poetics. The blog is a good entry point and a way to help get your work out there. To submit to the blog send us an email with your proposal. We are not beholden to a particular style or length. If you have a 2000 word review we might be interested. If you have a 30 word manifesto we also might be interested. If you are another publisher of poetry and would like your books reviewed please feel free to get in touch too. We want to support the poetry ecosystem, network, rhizome as a whole.

Chapbook Competition - SUBMISSIONS OPEN FEB 1ST TO MAY 1ST

work & tumble’s ‘Chapbook Competition’ is an annual competition that will result in the publication of a chapbook. We are looking for one long poem or a suite of shorter poems that fits within a 20 page format. This is a chance for you to submit a single piece that a journal might overlook or a series of pieces that work together and that you don't want to split up. You can submit via email. Put 'ATTN Chapbook Competition' as the subject line.

Anthology Edition - SUBMISSIONS OPEN MARCH 1ST TO JUNE 1ST

work & tumble’s ‘Anthology Edition' is an annual anthology of the best individual poems that we have received during the submission period. We are looking for shorter pieces up to 30 lines. 3 poems per poet. You can submit via email. Put 'ATTN Anthology Edition' as the subject line.